Fortress in the Eye of Time by C. J. Cherryh

from the loft. He thought Mauryl might be angry that he had seen the Road, and it would make Mauryl talk of going away again: that was what he feared. He studied very hard. He thought that he read Mauryl’s name in the Book, and came and asked him if that was so.
    Mauryl said he would not be surprised. And that was all. So when he had studied the codex so long his eyes swam, he read the easy writings that Mauryl had made, and he copied them.
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    Some things, however, came much easier than others.
    â€œSometimes,” Tristen said, one evening, brushing the soft-stiff feather of the quill between his lips, while his elbows kept his much-scraped study parchment flat on the table, “sometimes I know how to do things you never taught me. How is that, Mauryl?”
    Mauryl looked up from his own work, at least to the lifting of a shaggy brow, the pause of the quill tip above the inkpot.The pen dipped, then, wrote a word or two. “What things?” Mauryl asked him.
    â€œHow to write letters. How to read.”
    â€œI suppose some things come and some things don’t.”
    â€œCome where, Mauryl?”
    â€œInto your head, where else? The moon? The postern tower?”
    â€œBut other things, too, Mauryl. I don’t know that I know Words. I see something or I touch something, and I know what it is or what to do with it. And sometimes it happens with things I see every day, over and over, only suddenly I know the Word, or I know how words fit together that I never understood before, or I know there’s more to a thing. And some of them scare me.”
    â€œWhat scares you?”
    â€œI don’t know. Only I’m not certain I have all the parts. I try to read the Book, Mauryl, and the letters are there, but the words…I don’t know any of the words.”
    â€œMagic is like that. Maybe there’s a glamor on the Book. Maybe there’s one over your eyes. Such things happen.”
    â€œWhat’s magic?”
    â€œIt’s what wizards do.”
    â€œDo you sometimes know Words that way, by touching them?”
    â€œI’m very old. I find very little I don’t know, now.”
    â€œWill I be old?”
    â€œPerhaps.” Mauryl dipped the pen again. “If you’re good. If you study.”
    â€œWill I be old like you?”
    â€œPlague on your questions.”
    â€œWill I be old, Mauryl?”
    â€œI’m a wizard,” Mauryl snapped, “not a fortune-teller.”
    â€œWhat’s a—”
    â€œPlague, I say!” Mauryl frowned and jerked another parchment over the first, discarded that one and lifted the corner to look at the one below, and the one below that. He pulled out one from the depths of the pile.
    â€œMauryl, I don’t ever want you to go away.”
    â€œI gave you the Book. What does the Book say?”
    He was ashamed. And had nothing to say.
    â€œThe answer is there, boy.”
    â€œI can’t read the words!”
    â€œSo you have a lot to do, don’t you? I’d get busy.”
    Tristen rested his chin against his arm, rubbed it, because it itched, and it felt strange under his fingers.
    â€œMauryl, can you read the Book?”
    â€œYou have no patience for your studies today, is that it? You worry at this, you worry at that—how am I to finish this?”
    â€œAre you copying?”
    â€œCiphering. Gods, go outside, you’ve made me blot the answer. Enjoy the air. Give me peace. But mind—” Mauryl added sharply as he sprang up and his chair scraped the stone. He stayed quite still. “Mind you stay to the north walk, and when the shadows fall all the way across the courtyard—”
    â€œI come inside. I always do.—Mauryl.—Why the north walk? Why never the south?”
    â€œBecause I say so.” Mauryl waved a dismissive hand. “Go, go, and leave an old man to his figures.”
    â€œWhat figures? What do you—”
    â€œ Go ,